Breakfast at Jacinda's
The Prime Minister sat down for breakfast, a bit quieter than usual what with being in isolation. She scanned through the headlines and enjoyed the peace.
She was having a cup of tea and some Marmite toast, or what she and Clarke now referred to as the “Bishop’s Breakfast” after Brian Tamaki had a massive whine about eating the same in Mt Eden.
There was an article about Joni Mitchell pulling her music from Spotify because it was a platform providing misinformation to eager idiots. A smile crossed her face; it reminded her of when she told Newstalk ZB she would no longer be on Mike Hosking’s show every week. She imagined his expression of shock and impotent rage – ah happy days.
Next there was an article about a journalist called Charlotte Bellis, she remembered seeing that name on the evacuation list when Kabul fell.
Charlotte had declined the offer of a flight back to Aotearoa, very brave, thought the PM, of her refusal to leave, adamant she was staying even at a time when others would have welcomed her opportunity to return home.
Charlotte wanted to come home now, otherwise she was going to have to go to some unnamed third-party country, but that meant she had to go through MIQ. According to the article this meant the PM was now less supportive of women than the Taliban.
She thought of Cindy Kiro who she had appointed as the first female Maori Governor General. Cindy was also in isolation having been on the same flight. The PM suspected Cindy would get a good a laugh out of that, she thought of calling her and telling her - apparently under my leadership woman are better off in Afghanistan than here.
Reading the next article made her snort involuntarily, a bubble of Earl Grey came out of her nose. She looked around self consciously and thought it really was good to be at home and not sitting in the Koru Club with all those National voters in their suits as Luxon regaled them in the corner about how he used to run the place.
According to the article Christopher was now more popular than she was. Reading the detail she could see far more people approved of her than of Christopher, but that wasn’t the headline.
More people disapproved of her as well, I guess it’s hard to get too many people disapproving when all you do is smile and wave and you haven’t even announced any policies she thought.
What it actually looked like was many people didn’t have a view on Christopher at all, the headline would have been more accurate if it said, “More people have heard of the PM”.
Clarke and Neve came bounding in. He said “just had a call from Charlotte Bellis’ lawyer, he asked for you to directly intervene I told him you said sweet as”. She gave him that WTAF stare she normally reserved for Tova during press conferences. He laughed - pranked you - then he and Neve ran off giggling.
Jacinda poured another cup of tea and sighed, how inappropriate would it be for her to intervene and circumvent the process. Just then the phone rang - it was David Seymour, on behalf of Charlotte Bellis’ lawyer.
The next time it rang the call was more welcome – your test has come back negative.
Perhaps another round of toast.